The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the reader as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not to be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon.
It is known that a key is a device that is used to operate a lock. The key serves to lock or unlock the lock, keyway, gate, etc. A typical key is a small piece of metal consisting of two parts: the blade, which slides into the keyway of the lock and distinguishes between different keys, and the bow, which is left protruding so that torque can be applied by the user. The key serves as a security token for access to the locked area; only persons having the correct key can open the lock and gain access to a gate, door, vehicle ignition, and the like.
Generally, door lock keys are devices that allow security access to its user. However, the inexpensive device can become difficult to use in locations with poor lighting, owing to weather conditions, time of day or physical orientation of the lock. To address this problem, illumination is the required solution. There are night light devices that illuminate around the keyway in conditions that ordinarily make the key's usage difficult.
A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a geographic location. Geofencing is a location-based service in which an app or other software uses GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi or cellular data to trigger a pre-programmed action when a mobile device or RFID tag enters or exits a virtual boundary set up around the geographical location. A geo-fence could be dynamically generated—as in a radius around a point location, or a geo-fence can be a predefined set of boundaries.
Other proposals have involved illuminating keyways, and identifying the location of lost keys. The problem with these illumination devices is that they do not provide an independent source for locating and alerting to the lost key. Also, the illumination is not triggered effectively when the key approaches the keyway. Also, they do not indicate if the matching key is being used in the keyway. Even though the above cited illuminating keys and lost-key alerts meet some of the needs of the market, a keyway illumination and key-loss prevention system that provides a smart key having a master module, and a keyway having an integral slave module; whereby the modules are in operational communication with a mobile communication device that is operable with a positional detection software application; whereby the positional detection software identifies relative positions of the master and slave module for actuating an illumination device when the smart key enters the geofence of the keyway, and triggering an alert when the smart key exits the geofence of the keyway, is still desired.